While the restoration of the American Tobacco Historic District is in itself a fascinating story, I have found some of the most intriguing stories to be about the rank and file workers who are making this happen day by day, shift by shift.

I'll never forget the first day I encountered Ben Bromiley. It was August, hot as blazes. He was directing a crew tearing out old floor beams in Reed. He was not perspiring, he was sweating. Down on his hands and knees, stretched between floor joists, tied off with a safety harness, he was cranking on a come-along, a mechanical device that tightens a chain. This chain was attached to a beam that was being removed.

He looked up at me, and without missing a beat on that come-along, said, "Is that an old Leica M-3 you have dangling around your neck."

Lord forgive me for stereotyping people.

Who would have guessed a construction worker in the middle of a hot job, down on his hands and knees, would have recognized a German made camera that became the workhorse of Life Magazine photographers dating back to pre-World War II days?

This week I met Carvin Richardson from Warren County. In just a short conversation as he ripped plywood, I learned that he started in construction in 1962. When I aimed my camera in his direction, he told me he was once photographed with his uncle when they were erecting re-bar for the parking deck for the North Carolina Legislative Building in Raleigh in 1978. It was obvious he was proud that the photograph was a significant part of a story in the News & Observer, the daily newspaper published in Raleigh.

Perhaps thinking I was a reporter for a major newspaper, he modestly bragged that he had a niece who was a reporter for the Washington Post. I asked him if she traveled a world-wide beat.

He responded, "Yes, I was really worried about her when that Afghanistan deal rolled around."

I have yet to talk to a construction worker at the American Tobacco Historic District who has not exhibited pride in the job he or she is doing. I have a theory about Carvin Richardson, who drives to Durham from Warren County every day for this work.

I suspect his niece, as she travels about with other reporters around the world, is modestly bragging that she has an uncle who is playing an important role in the most significant historical restoration perhaps to ever happen in all of North Carolina.

She has to be as proud of him as he is of her.